The Piper's Calling You to Join Him
by GLuisa88
Summary: Season 7/8 AU. Sometimes an imaginary!Dean is better than no Dean at all.


The air is humid, stagnant, it feels like a storm is coming. His fingers feel thick with it, his hair sticks to his neck.

"It'll get easier," she tells him. She speaks so easily about his grief. As if she can relate her losses to his.  
He tightens his grip around his beer bottle, his knuckles are white.

"Yeah, well. Maybe it shouldn't."

There's a silence. He holds onto it and hopes she will as well.

Amelia speaks, "He'd want you to move on."

 _What a fucking cliche_ , he thinks. _He'd rather not be in hell_ , Sam's pretty sure.

…

 _"People worry too much about dying," Dean had told Sam. They'd been driving too long, stuck in traffic just outside Little Rock. "Me, I worry about not dying."  
_

 _"What?"  
_

 _"Dying. Is there such a thing? Or will there always be something to pull us back?"  
_

 _Sam looks down at his fingers, tears at a cuticle until it bleeds.  
_

 _"I don't know," Dean continues after a reasonable silence, "Life suits me fine. I just worry. I feel like I've earned an ending."  
_

 _"You're thirty-two, Dean."  
_

 _"Huh. Really? Feel older."_

...

Dean drives up, one day, in a Disney blue Volkswagon Beetle. A grin on his face, but no explanations to give.

"Where've you been?" Sam asks.

"Oh, you know, around," Dean grins wider.

"Fucking hell- you left without saying goodbye!"

"Yeah," Dean glances around at the life Sam's made for himself, shrugs, "I almost sent you this postcard." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a worn, frayed postcard that reads, _Burning in Hell, wish you were here._

"Almost sent it," Dean says. "Didn't wanna pay the postage."

...

He lies still and watches the way her body rises and falls with each breath.

The red digits on the clock flash 4:47. He subtracts two hours. Last night's thunderstorm had wiped out out the power and he still hadn't figured out how to reset the damn thing.

"You're not Dean and I think I kinda hate you for it," Sam whispers, his voice seems louder in the silence than he'd expected. She's asleep, he's counting on it.

He scrubs his eyes and whispers again, "I'm sorry."

He rolls over, too awake now to ever fall back asleep.

...

"Is it weird? All the times I didn't think we'd make it out of alive, I was still caught off guard when you died. _God_. Give a man some fucking warning, you know?"

...

Tell me about her," Dean says. They sit together in Sam's darkened bedroom. It had been bright with natural light when they'd entered, no one had bothered to turn on the lights as the sun began to set. Sam doesn't dare; he doesn't want to watch Dean vanish along with the darkness.

They sit so close, Sam wonders if Dean can feel the goosebumps that run along his arms.

"Who? Amelia?"

"Of course." Dean takes a swig of whiskey, straight from the bottle. Passes it off to Sam. "Drink. You're cold."

Sam nods, takes it.

He feels so tired, drained. He doesn't know what to say. "She's good," he says. "She's good for me." That long ago stopped being true, he thinks. It used to be, he used to fall asleep with that thought running through his head like hope. Like hope that maybe one day he could learn how to survive. Like one day he wouldn't be empty. Like one day she would show him how to be human again

He traces the stitching on his jeans and looks at his brother's face. "She's not you," He admits, after a great deal of silence. He drains the rest of the whiskey and hands the empty bottle back to his brother. "And I'm falling apart without you."

...

"I can hardly fix myself," says Amelia, "I can't fix _him_ too. He's gone boneless on me. I can't drag him along like this, I'm not strong enough to carry both of us."

...

Amelia asks him if he has been "using again." Not in so few words. She tries to make it sound less accusatory, more like concern, as if he can't tell the difference.

"You're spacey, you're moody. Sometimes you're damn terrifying."

She expects an answer from him, she wants a confession. She wants to watch him shatter like Humpty Dumpty so she can pick up his pieces and put him back together again.

"Don't intervention me," he says, too weary to put much heat behind it. "I thought we understood each other," He says, "Both of us are broken and neither of us tries to fix anyone."

She presses her lips together and stands. "Yeah. I understand."

...

Peanut shells stick to the bottom of his shoe. His eyes and throat burn from the second hand smoke; the smell reminds him of Dean and he finds he breathes easier than he has in the months since Dean left.

He sits in the corner, hugs a bottle of whiskey to his chest and feeds the jukebox, making Zeppelin sing the same song over and over again.

A man, drunker than Sam, hovers close by. A quarter clenched in his fist, waiting till Sam looks away long enough so that he can change the tune to Joan Jett.

The man had tried it once before, earlier in the evening. He had been more aggressive at the time but had backed off when Sam threatened to break his whiskey bottle over his head.

"Mmmm makes me wonder…" Sam sings loudly, ignoring the looks he gets from those more sober than he. He takes another large gulp of whiskey and winces at the way it burns his chest on its way to his stomach.

"Really? Stairway to Heaven?" Sam jolts, nearly loses his balance. "Bein' kinda maudlin, don't you think?"

Dean stands so close, Sam can smell his aftershave.

He feels Dean's warm hand on his back, steadying him.

"How long you stickin' around for this time?"

"You're drunk, Sammy."

"So?"

"So, you should get home to your woman," Dean says, sharp enough to cut glass.

Sam grins, dopey, "You're my 'woman'," he says, grabbing for Dean's face.

Dean sidesteps Sam's hands and pries the whiskey bottle out of his hands, "Geez." He lifts Sam's arm up and ducks underneath it. "We gotta get you home," he says.

The gray early light of morning, raindrops chasing each other across his windshield. A tree sits in the middle of his car hood, a strange place for a tree to be. He lifts his head up and feels something wet trailing down his face, dripping from his chin onto the steering wheel.

He looks down.

Blood.

Every bone in his body feels like it is on fire. In the distance he can hear sirens.

 _Fuck._ He whispers.

He is in the hospital for three days.

Amelia visits him once. Doesn't visit him again. Says she needs to clear her head. What a shitty time to do so, Sam thinks.

Dean, on the other hand, won't leave.

"Visiting hours are over," Sam tells him.

"What the fuck were you thinking, driving my Baby into a fucking tree?!"

"You were driving," Sam says.

"I'm a fucking _hallucination_. You're cracking up, Sammy. Pull it together!"

How much loss can one person take? Every time someone he loves dies, they take a little piece of him with them.

"I'm not asking if you love me," Amelia says. "I'm just asking if you care for me at all. Do you even want to be here?"

Here? As in, on this planet? Because God, no. Here? As in, with her- well, it's better than being _alone_.

"If you're looking for a reason to leave," He answers, "Then go ahead. I've given you plenty of reasons."

"I'm not looking for a reason to leave, I'm looking for a reason to stay."

"That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard," Sam says, his eyes burning.

Two days later, Amelia leaves. She stuffs all of her belongings into the trunk, with no help from Sam, straps her bike onto the top of her car and drives off. She had said he could have the house, she didn't mind. "Rent's due at the beginning of the month," She tells him. "I know," he says.

The house feels like his tomb. He thinks that's how it's always felt. Four walls closing in on him, suffocating him slowly.

He lies in bed and waits for Dean to come.

Watches as the numbers on the clock change. The room grows dark, he lies awake and thinks maybe he'll just let himself die here.

He lies awake and thinks about the loaded gun in the bedside table, just inches from his face. He thinks about how freedom lies just inches away.

He thinks about how Dean has been in the bedside table all this time.

He breathes, in, out. It hurts so fucking much.

His car comes to a stop in front of the address he had been given.

The gravel pathway crunches underneath his boots.

The windows are darkened but the door is unlocked. He stuffs his lock pick back into his pocket.

"Sam," He calls. Silence.

The stairs are carpeted, they creak, the railing feels wobbly under his hand.

"Sam!" He calls louder this time.

He checks in the first room, finds it empty.

The second room, empty.

The third room, his brother sits in bed. Gun to his chin.

" _Sam!_ "

Their eyes meet briefly as Sam pulls the trigger.


End file.
